Transverse Mass Distribution and Charge Asymmetry in W Boson Production to Third Order in QCD

TL;DR

This paper calculates third-order QCD corrections to W boson production at hadron colliders, significantly improving the precision of theoretical predictions for key distributions and charge asymmetry relevant for Tevatron and LHC experiments.

Contribution

It provides the first N$^3$LO QCD corrections to the rapidity and transverse mass distributions of W bosons, enhancing the accuracy of theoretical models for collider measurements.

Findings

Substantial QCD corrections in relevant kinematic regions

Quantified impact on W boson mass determination

Comparison with electroweak uncertainties

Abstract

Charged gauge boson production at hadron colliders is a fundamental benchmark for the extraction of electroweak parameters and the understanding of the proton structure. To enable precision phenomenology for this process, we compute the third-order (N$^3$LO) QCD corrections to the rapidity distribution and charge asymmetry in W boson production and to the transverse mass distribution of its decay products. Our results display substantial QCD corrections in kinematic regions relevant for Tevatron and LHC measurements. We compare the numerical magnitude of the N$^3$LO corrections with uncertainties from electroweak input parameters and quantify their potential impact on the determination of the W boson mass.